Alright, here's how I would reboot Doctor Who

 

"For crying out loud, it's just a TV show!" - William Shatner, Saturday Night Live, 1986.

Part One: Baggage.

Let me get this out of the way first; I started watching Doctor Who when I was 6 years old. It was the 1993 Planet of the Daleks broadcast specifically. Obviously I wouldn't be writing a thing like this if I didn't immediately fall in love with the show. I spent the next decade of my life experiencing the show in bits and pieces. A recording from UK Gold here, a boxed set rented from the library there. The show formed a core of my being, of that there is no doubt, even though in the grand scheme of things it was just a TV show.

The 1990s and 2000s were a long crawl for the show's cultural irrelevancy. Being into the Doctor Who was genuinely considered weird. "Cult." Conventions were humble and somewhat offbeat affairs. That being said, we were content in our irrelevancy. The wilderness years brought forth some of the best Doctor Who stories we as fans got to experience. The Doctor Who magazine comic strips. The Big Finish audios. The New Adventures and BBC books.

Yet we always hoped against hope that the show would come back one day. Air on TV. New stories week after week, become truly mainstream again, and like a monkey's paw that wish came true.

I'm not going to waste time airing my grievances here. I never particular cared for the 2005 - 2010 years. There was just something about that era that never really gelled for me. That being said, I can't deny that there were moments that I enjoyed, or even loved. Dalek. Blink. Doomsday. Time Crash. Moments where I could be a fan without reservations. Still, it never really clicked.

The Moffat era was a marked improvement for me, though to be honest it still felt compromised by some of the tonal hangovers from the RTD era. It wouldn't be until Peter Capaldi's final season that I felt like Doctor Who was finally starting to resemble what I originally fell in love with, and, ironically, I would enjoy the Chibnall era without reservations at all. I know that isn't a popular opinion, but I genuinely enjoyed that era.

Hence I was sad to see it go in 2022. I was less than pleased to here RTD was being brought back to revitalise the show, but I was willing to give him a fair shake. We'd both changed over the last 20 years. No reason to come at it with any previous baggage.

Well, anyway, turns out the RTD revival era would be turbo-not-to-my-particular-tastes-3000.

Part Two: Throwing out the baggage.

So, what was the point of all that preamble? Well, as Shatner's maxim denotes, only a fool gets so invested in a TV show that it takes over their entire life. My days of fuming over farting aliens and duplicate David Tennants is long over. People love that era, and for good reason. That it didn't work for me is sour grapes at worse.

There's a part of me that wants to go on a week long rant about how bad The Reality War was, how cynical I feel regenerating The Doctor into Billie Piper is, and how deep RTD's head must be in the sand to produce one of the worst hours of TV I have ever seen, but I'm a 37 year old man and I should not be investing this much emotional energy into a cheap TV show about a time travelling space wizard.

All this is to say... why rant when you can channel the energy into something creative? And let me be clear here, much of the below pitch is an idea I've been mulling over for quite a long period. It's not a direct reaction to The Reality War. Nor is it an attempt to resurrect an idealised version of the classic or Chibnall eras. Everything I choose to pitch below is carefully considered. A clean break. A proposal focussed on winning back fans AND appealing to a brand new audience.

With that in mind, we commence.

Part Three: Where are we now?

The decisions made regarding this pitch are done so assuming the following status quo would be present as of its air date:

- The show would have been off the air for several years.

- The Billie Piper casting would have seen some form of resolution, rather than left hanging.

- The BBC would be willing to fund the show with a modest budget. No DisneyPlus involvement.

With the stage set I would need to open with my first distinct proposal; write the show with a more mature perspective in mind. I know the common consensus is that Doctor Who should appeal to children first and foremost, but I don't think giving the show a more grown-up angle would necessarily jeopardize that. I think stories that appeal more to teenagers and young adults would serve the show better than always dumbing things down for six year olds to get in on the ground floor.

I say this as someone who got into the show at age six, but we have to give up on this ideal that the show is going to be a generational constant that kids will get to experience year after year, decade after decade. The entertainment ecosystem just isn't like that any more. Doctor Who has to compete with Roblox and Fortnite, Youtube and TicToc. The opportunity to be that generational constant may already be long gone.

My proposal is that just making a good TV show that finds an audience would be enough.

To whit, I propose a Doctor Who reboot that skews towards an older audience. A Doctor that drinks alcohol. Stories that can delve into darker areas like drug dealing and historical war crimes. Where relationships between companions can be explored on the sexual level. Don't get me wrong, I'm not talking about Torchwood here, but just allow the show to get a little more adult than it previously was. To no longer hide stuff behind innuendo.

Meanwhile, I also propose a format that that prioritises longer, multi-part stories. This serves two purposes. It gives writers room to actually explore their stories in greater depth, something the show has been in dire need of late, but also works as a budget conscious creative decision. A nine episode season made up of three stories would be significantly cheaper than eight episodes each needing a fresh location, cast and costumes.

So with the stage and tone set, let's introduce our characters.

Part Four: The Doctor. Mysterious. Intense. Frightening.

Indira Varma is The Doctor. Yes, I know she was in Torchwood and Rogue. No, this will never be acknowledged in-show. Indira is an amazing actress. Dedicated and versatile. Sometimes I forget it is her when I'm watching season one of Rome, such as it is she can blend into the role. I don't think I need to convince anyone of this casting choice. If you know her work then you know she would absolutely nail it.

Personality wise, I want a darker, more intense and less friendly Doctor. Think late-era Sylvester McCoy or Peter Capaldi. This is a Doctor who rarely, if ever, smiles. She's aloof, somewhat above it all. Cold, calculating, but likeable. She's Mr Spock, with a little touch of Gandalf and David Bowie in They Hunger. She'll get mistaken for a vampire on numerous occasions, the way she frequently hangs back in the shadows and calculates her next move.

She's also a physically active Doctor. Like Pertwee, she's not afraid to get her hands dirty and will frequently pull out the Venusian Aikido when her back is against the wall, though as with Mr Spock, she will frequently disable her opponents with as little showmanship as possible, and does not relish the use of violence.

The sonic screwdriver's use and utility will be massively decreased. It can unlock doors, and that's about it. It can't hack into computers, and it can't "read" data about the environment or whatever. The psychic paper is nowhere to be seen. This is a Doctor that has to think their way out of a problem, not bypass it with gadgets or space magic.

Part Five: The Companions. Strong, dysfunctional, distinct.

This reboot will introduce three major companions. Yes, you heard me right. Once again, I want to discard common consensus that we have to be introduced through single, common everyman. Note, the actors I have chose are mainly just for the purposes of giving you a feel for the character. I have no idea if they'd be affordable or even available, but they should give you an image of how the character would be.

Bella Ramsey is Ash. A wanderer, a thief, a vagabond. They've been running their whole life. No home. No parents. Just survival on the streets of 21st Century Britain. They're slow to trust, which makes sense, since Britain isn't exactly a trusting place right now. This is why they are drawn to the Doctor. They're alike in some ways. Travellers without a home. Purpose to be found in turning the next corner.

Dakota Beavers is Tommy. A rez kid who just wants a quiet life. He's a good mechanic, which is more than can be said for his weed dealing cousin who keeps bringing the heat down on them both. Tommy otherwise would be of no concern to The Doctor, if it wasn't for that strange sonic wrench handed down from his grandfather, that seems to contain very Gallifreyan looking technology.

Abigail Lawrie is Princess Ssesler. Heir to the throne of New Mars, Ssesler is an Ice Lady who has no interest in ruling the Martian people, and has run away from home to seek adventure, hunting down the artefacts of Old Mars' glory days. Immature, petulant, yet genuinely fascinated and open minded on cultures from the past, Ssesler's collision course with The Doctor may not go smoothly, but their curious natures are a strong complement.

I know three companions might be seen as stacking the cast, and I get that, but I also think that a broader season, that splits stories over three episodes apiece, will allow the leeway to develop them all and give them room to breathe.

Part Six: The Opening Act.

Season One opens in medias res, where Ash is planning to rob a priceless antique from a high-stakes auction. Also on the scene is The Doctor, who is showing a particular interest in an odd, blue diamond. The two are antagonistic at first, but quickly team up against the villainous Count Jackson, who also wants the diamond. The Doctor reveals that this is a Temporal Lodestone, ancient time manipulation tech that should have been long buried. Count Jackson is actually Jugasar, of the Jagaroth, an ancient race who have had their corporal forms shattered across time. Jugasasr wishes to unite three Temporal Lodestone, which would give him the power to reform on ancient earth and prevent the extinction of his race, at the cost of humanity ever existing. Episode 1 ends with Jugasar successfully getting the first Lodestone and blinking away from Britain and our heroes. The Doctor and Ash run to the Tardis and give chase.

Episode 2 begins with Tommy pulling into the local reservation bar, only to find a new state Police Chief introducing himself to the reservation Sheriff. Chief Jackson lectures Tommy on his authority, admitting that he has no intent to respect the reservation's sovereignty if it gets in his way. Tommy then immediately heads out to his cousin's weed farm to warn him that trouble might be on its way. We discover Tommy has a mysterious, sonic screwdriver-like device, and that his grandfather knew about things on a "Cosmic," level. Jackson ambushes Tommy on his way back to town, only for the Tardis to materialise around Tommy's car. The Doctor, now with Ash in tow, reveals that the next Loadstone is somewhere on the reservation, and together they discover that somehow it is buried in Tommy's grandfather's grave. The story ends with both hero and villain having one Lodestone each.

Episode 3 begins in the ancient ruins of Mars. Princess Ssesler is doing a bit of tomb raiding, while an Ice Warrior security squad, lead by Lord Jassskon, approaches the planet to bring the princess home. The Doctor, Tommy and Ash arrive, cross paths with Ssesler and battle the Ice Warrior security squad. We go through some Indiana Jones style tombs and traps, before having a big showdown at an ancient Martian temple where the final lodestone remains. Jugasar succeeds in finding the Loadstone, overpowers the Tardis team for the second time and activates the three, only for his form to disintegrate into the time vortex.. The final Lodestone was a fake, only figured out by Ssesler, who knew that the ancient Martians would never display such a valuable artefact so prominently, and clocked it as a fake.

With the threat neutralised The Doctor departs, with all three of her new companions choosing to accompany her onto adventures in the Tardis, and they depart for worlds unknown.

Part Seven: Pushing the Boat Out.

From here on out I'd want the series to just focus on strong, straight science fiction concepts. A squad of soldiers on an ice planet locked in a stalemate with clone duplicates who have no way of knowing which are the clones and which are the originals. A story set during the English Civil War where a local preacher imbued with the power of an alien artefact is inadvertently using it to rile up the tempers of the Roundheads. A lone Dalek stalks a deep space salvage ship in an Alien-type horror story.

Have a story that explores the Galactic Federation. Have the Tardis team come across a conspiracy to sabotage two warring civilisations that the Federation is attempting to mediate with (Sontarons/Rutans? Dravens/Bannermen? Dominators/Krotons? Two completely new alien races?) and it is a race against time before the two sides detonate a sun in an attempt to cripple the other's fleet.

If UNIT is to reappear, really just try to take them back to square one. They're a small international force of specialists that is being directed from the European Mainland. Dealing with red tape and dismissive authorities is just as much of a problem as alien infiltrators. If Kate is still around, have her butt heads with an antagonistic (though ultimately well intentioned) bean counter officer from Geneva that keeps hamstringing their operations with budget cuts.

Big idea for the finale. The Doctor crosses paths with another renegade time lord, Praxis, that serves as a Magneto to their Professor X. An extremist who isn't afraid to get their hands dirty to do what they feel is right. Have a story on a planet where in 100 years time the robotic subclass will gain sentience and fight for liberation, but Praxis reveals that their sentience manifested much earlier, and wants to liberate the bots now, even if it will result in a more violent uprising. Will The Doctor condemn a persecuted underclass to 100 years of oppression, or could they justify the deaths of thousands of humans in the crossfire if it means their liberation? Really explore the murky reality of such a choice and have Praxis call The Doctor out over their frequent both-sidesisms. A more anti-heroic adversary than a villain like The Master, and an ending where the Doctor has to choose between the lesser of two evils, without giving the audience a clear answer on what that is.

Some other ideas for companions jumping in later on. A revisit of the Leela concept with a big Red-Sonja type barbarian woman from an aquatic world who has gills. Introductory story involves overthrowing the corporation that is exploiting the planet. Have her butt heads with The Doctor on cultural issues. Maybe introduce a 1930's hard boiled detective to hang around in the Tardis for a while and be friends-with-benefits with the barbarian woman. Lend a time-shifted and alien perspective to stories like we used to get with some of the companions in classic who.

Part Eight: The Bit Where I Just Get Self Indulgent

I envision this all as a three season run, and the power will probably go to my head before Season 3. Before said season launches, we do three specials starring Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor. I have no pragmatic reason to do this, and in fact it'd probably be a bad idea to do it in the middle of a era that is trying to be a fresh start, but I really want to see Paul McGann on screen again and if I was showrunner I'd do everything in my power to squeeze that in.

In my defence the three specials would be entirely optional for new audiences, but tie in to the overall third season for those watching. The Three Stories would be adaptions of The Chimes of Midnight, Children of the Revolution and Alien Bodies, with McGann back and India Fisher playing Charley. It will be made clear that The Doctor suspects that has already experienced these stories before, which is why they are both older than they should be, and realising during the climax of Alien Bodies that Charley shouldn't be there. This would be revealed to be due to the machinations of Faction Paradox, the Expanded Universe time travelling cult that draws power from paradoxes. This would lead in to featuring them as the arc villains of season 3.

Obviously we'd take care to introduce them properly and don't leave people feeling like they need to go back and read wilderness years novels to get the jist of them. In the final story the Tardis team come across an auction in some grand futuristic space station, mirroring the antiques auction in the first episode. The Doctor discovers that the auction is being held by Faction Paradox, who are selling artefacts from The Doctor's future. The team then has to find a way to put a stop to the auctions, as these items all need to find their proper place in the Doctor's timeline, but the strain of coming into contact with so many artefacts out of sync with her timeline puts enough stress on her to force a regeneration, leaving the new incumbent Doctor, to finally finish the fight.

Alternatively, my other "glup shitto" idea would be to do a final season dubbed "Doctor Who Must Die!" Where the Doctor gets a bounty put on their head and has to spend an entire season outsmarting intergalactic hitmen. Bring back Vinder, now back under the machinations of the Grand Serpent. Bring in Shayde from the DWM comic strips, now reprogrammed to seek vengeance on behalf of the Time Lords. Resurrect Rogue, older and vengeful after his time in the hell dimension. Make it known to the audience the story will end with the Doctor's regeneration and leave them guessing and debating who, exactly, will be the one to pull the trigger.

Part Nine: Kill your darlings.

“A lot of times when you’re working on IP storytelling your impulse is to open the toybox and start playing with all the toys. You should try to resist that. What you should do is leave more toys in the toybox than were there before you got there” - Tony Gilroy, 2025.

So, upon reading the last part back I realised that all that stuff would be an inherently bad idea. Much as I would like to see McGann back in the role, or live action versions of characters from the comics to show up, this is absolutely not the time for all that. This is meant to be a relaunch. A fresh start. In a world where you're inheriting a Doctor Who era that is flying high, you can get away with talking spin-offs and deep lore cuts, but for an era that is coming after a presumed hiatus, you just have to let all that go. Those who fail to learn the lessons of RTD2 are doomed to repeat it.

Kill your darlings. Forget Faction Paradox and The Grand Serpent. Keep the series on the straight and narrow. Just keep up with good, strong, self-contained science fiction stories. Use UNIT sparingly. Use your time to flesh out more of the newly introduced aspects and characters, like Praxis. Heck, I was maybe even a bit too indulgent for the opening episodes, with the inclusion of the Jagaroth and the Ice Warriors. Maybe Lord Jackson ought to be from a brand new alien race. Maybe Princess Ssesler ought to be too.

Part Ten: In Conclusion.

This was mostly just spitballing ideas amongst all the recent talk of the show going on hiatus. It's not perfect. Either way, I hope it's clear that my attempt with this was to show the numerous ways the show could go without going back to the well of the same old shit. We don't need to have the companion be a bubbly young woman from modern day earth every single time. We don't need the series to be bogged down with myth arcs. We don't need to squeeze a monster of the week story into a 45 minute episode every week. Expand your mind. Think outside of the box.

I also hope it goes to show how it isn't so easy to avoid giving in to your baser impulses. There's a "glup shitto," cavalcade in all of us, waiting to break out at a moment's notice. Always keep that in check.

Maybe this little ramble has given some food for thought, and I encourage each and every one of you to have a hard think about how YOU would do a reboot if you ever had the chance. You never know, someone out there completely new may one day be in the big chair. Doctor Who can't stay in the hands of the same creative team forever.

Or at least, I hope it won't.

Why The Eighth Doctor Comic Strips are Some of the Best Comics Ever Written

This column has been taking a look at obscure comics for twelve months. For every every sixth month, instead of taking a look at a comic that nobody talks about, this special edition will take a look at a comic I feel not enough people talk about.

                                            

Doctor Who: The Eighth Doctor Comic Strips by Scott Gray and various artists – Doctor Who Magazine 1996 to 2005

Contains Spoilers

It was a strange time to be a Doctor Who fan in the mid nineties. The series had been off the air long enough that people had basically assumed it was never coming back. Few official stories had been released within the decade by the BBC, but the desire from both fans and writers for a return was only getting stronger.

Then everything changed, and at the same time, nothing changed. The 1995 Paul McGann movie proved there was fertile ground for the character to move on to, but it was an abject failure at courting new audiences.

As a young kid who didn't really understand the peaks and troughs of film and TV politics, I was waiting, with bated breath, for the TV series to return. It was bound to happen right? Only a matter of time?

In a post Doctor Who The Movie world there was a great feeling of betrayal. We had something so close and had been denied. And so we sought solace in the only place we could, The Doctor Who Magazine's monthly strip. It was the closest thing we'd get to seeing Paul McGann back on the screen.

It'd be easy to look back on DWM's Eighth Doctor strips with nostalgic fondness when that's practically the only Doctor Who you were getting at the time. And that's true, I lapped up what I could as a kid. With no TV series in sight, to me the DWM strip was Doctor Who.

I slipped in and out of reading it over the years, and I mostly read the colour strips when my brother was buying it regularly. But my interest fluctuated, and I had an egregious, homophobic reaction to the later stories which we'll get in to later.

I was in university by the time Doctor Who was back on the screen. I'd started buying the comic's reprints but I never went back and reappraised the Eighth Doctor stories until 2013, when I decided to finally complete the collection and read them as a single body of work.

It wasn't nostalgia. I enjoyed The Eight Doctor Strips so much more the second time round. They are some of the best Doctor Who stories ever written, maybe even some of the best comics I've ever read.

The whole four volume arc is itself relatively self contained, so I'd be interested to see what a reader with no foreknowledge of the TV show would think of the stories (I think they'd come across quite well.)

But what is it about these strips, written predominantly by Scott Gray, that makes them all time greats? Well, there’s a sense that Gray is really trying to break new ground with these stories. Long before we saw Doctor Who return to TV under Russell T Davis, Grey brought us a breezy, hip, forward thinking Doctor Who that could drop pop culture references at any moment, but still keep one foot rooted in classic Sci-fi, maybe even more so than the TV series, before or since.

In the beginning we're introduced to the Doctor's newest companion, Izzy Sinclare, a tomboyish science-fiction fan who is practically thrilled at the prospect of space-faring adventures. She's a great match for McGann's Doctor, who is at once level headed and serious, but also so full of hope and curiosity. Izzy can irritate him at times, but he just can't help but admire her enthusiasm.

The early stories are rather throwaway in tone, but they build an important foundation for what was to come later. Endgame sees the return of the Celestial Toymaker, and does what comics do best by creating fantastical and wonderful scenes that a TV budget would never get you.

The Daleks return, in Fire and Brimstone, a story that really does it's best to try and make them ultimately terrifying again, albeit in a very 90's Rob Liefield kind of way. The story has cracking action, and the art is a perfect fit for high concept sci-fi. Even so, it's the character driven stuff that really draws the appeal here. 

Alongside Izzy we're also introduced to androgynous super-spy Fey Truscott-Sade, who, though easy to miss at first, Izzy seems to be rather smitten with. It's the story The Final Chapter though, where the strip starts gaining steam. Not the story itself though, which is a fairly by-the-numbers look back at Time Lord mythology, but it's the ending that worth talking about. An ending which would go on to be one of the greatest pieces of trolling in comic book history.

A little context. With no sign of Doctor Who returning to the airwaves many fans had taken it upon themselves to produce their own future Who stories. One such example were the Audio Visual fan dramas, where Nicolas Briggs (who would go on to voice the Daleks in the TV series proper) was becoming quite popular playing a future incarnation. He'd actually appeared a few times as “the Nth Doctor” in some of the earlier comics.

At the end of The Final Chapter, Paul McGanns's Doctor seemingly sacrifices his life, triggering a regeneration and announcing Briggs as the new, official Ninth Doctor.

Readers fell for it hook, line, and sinker. Angry letters were sent in condemning DWM for writing off McGann's Doctor so early, while others said they had no right outside the TV series to make that call.

It was all a ruse of course. The Doctor was revealed to have faked his regeneration in the cracking space western, Wormwood. Teaming up with Time Lord bioweapon Shayde, the gang battle an 19^th Century industrialist and even more deadly bioweapon, The Pariah. The gang succeed, but not without Shayde being mortally wounded, forcing him to merge with Fay and essentially turning her into the Doctor Who equivalent of the Silver Surfer.

Wormwood creates the template that Gray would improve on over the subsequent years. It combined character drama with converging plot-lines and high concept stories with great action and visuals. It was all polished to a mirror shine, and the climax is great.

The next story arc, is, in my opinion, the best of the bunch. The Glorious Dead saw the return of Kroton, a Cyberman with a soul reinvented as a sort of Luke Cage character (who he even drops a reference to), he's also joined by Katsura, a samurai robbed of a noble death by The Doctor, and The Master, back as a schemer more vicious than he ever had been before (or since).

The Glorious Dead really embraces it's wide spectrum of comic book influences. Katsura's origin story sees references to classic and contemporary manga, and the main plot involves the two Time Lords battling it out for the throne of the multiverse. There's literal homages to Peanuts, Doctor Strange, X-Force and Dick Tracy. It's a comic aficionado's dream.

Right here, DWM was really leaving it's TV roots behind and embracing it's legacy as a comic first and foremost. With no TV series in sight, Doctor Who was dead, long live Doctor Who.

Soon later the comic would hit full colour for the very first time, and the quality and intensity of the stories would only increase from there. Ophidious would see Izzy swap brains with the amoral fish alien Destrii, only for Destrii to end up getting vaporised, leaving Izzy struggling to cope living in an unfamiliar body. 

The Way of All Flesh would see The Doctor and Izzy, no joke, team up with Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera to fight an alien art diva during Dia de los Muertos and it's a real doozey of a story. Then there's Children of the Revolution, voted one of the greatest DWM comics ever, that follows the legacy of a group of moralistic Daleks as they struggle to find a place in a universe that hates and fears them.

Things finally come to ahead in Oblivion as threads going all the way back to Endgame converge. Izzy, mistaken for Destrii, is summoned to her homeworld to take on the mantle of Primatrix. Meanwhile, The Doctor discovers that Destrii, in Izzy's body, isn't dead after all, and seeks to set right what once went wrong.

The story has action, adventure and political rivalries, but it is primarily concerned with Izzy coming to terms with who she is, as an outsider, an orphan and a lesbian.

In Scott Grey's commentary, at the back of Volume 3, he notes “I think we only got one angry letter (from an American reader) about Izzy and Fey's kiss. He cancelled his subscription in protest. I would have been deeply disappointed if we hadn't outraged somebody, so thank you, Mr Republican, wherever you are!” I think about that reader a lot, and the person I might have grown up to be.

For the young homophobic man that I was, the finale made me angry and confused. Going back in 2013, the story nearly moved me to tears. I didn't know it at the time, but Oblivion had played an important role in making me the person I am today.

The story ends with a big damn kiss with Fey, and a return to the day that Izzy first left in the Tardis. It's a neat and tidy ending, and would be the perfect place to finish, but Doctor Who wouldn't return to television for another three years, and there were still more stories to be told. It would have been easy, after Oblivion, for the strip to slip into a funk. It didn't, instead what they gave us was more of a victory lap.

The next run of stories are self contained but are some of the best homages in the entire run. The Nightmare Game is a cheeky, Roy of the Rovers inspired football adventure, The Curious Tail of Spring-heeled Jack is pretty self explanatory, and The Land of Happy Endings is told in the style of the old TV Comic Doctor Who stories from back in the 60's and re-contextualises them as The Doctor fantasising about a simpler, more childish world. 

We return to the long form epic arcs eventually with Bad Blood. Sitting Bull vs General Custer, the return of Destrii and Space Windigo. Jeeze oh man, is this story ever fucking awesome. Doctor Who, even now, has never had the budget to tackle western revisionism. But with comics? No problem. The TV stories have dealt with metaphorical stories of colonialism before, but here, it's front and centre.

As the kind of story Doctor Who was created to tell, it's probably be my favourite story of the whole bunch, even compared to The Glorious Dead.

Destrii joins the crew of the Tardis, finally, and so we reach the strip's grand finale, The Flood. The Flood isn't a particular complicated concept, reinvent a Cyberman story more suited for the modern age. It's interesting to compare The Flood with the TV's modern reinvention of the Cybermen, because they're like night and day in approach. 

When the TV series brought them back, the Cybermen were envisioned as hulking, boot stomping war machines. In The Flood the Cybermen look more fluid, more fragile. They don't stride towards their victims with menace, instead they glide and float. These Cybermen are eerie, truly alien.

The Flood finishes on another homage, one to Doctor Who itself. The last televised story before it's proper revival, Survival, ended with The Doctor and his companion Ace walking off into the distance, reminiscing of adventures gone by, and speculating on the ones to come.

The Flood's ending hits all those same beats. With Doctor Who returning to television this really was the Eighth Doctor's swan song and it decides to end in the same humble way the show did, reminiscing on the past, and looking forwards to the future.

I've never really felt the same way about a Doctor Who comic since the end of the Eighth Doctor's era. While there has been some exceptionally good work done by IDW and Titan and DWM itself, it's not quite got the same feeling now that the show is back on TV. The comics can't be quite as daring, or as experimental, as DWM was during it's wilderness years.

The Eighth Doctor Comics strips are some of my favourite comics. They're probably my favourite Doctor Who related stories period, and this is coming from a guy who's been a fan of the show since I was seven years old. They're ambitious and progressive, grand in scope yet warm and human. Paul McGann, despite only ever really having one proper TV appearance, is my Doctor, and that's in no small part due to what these comics mean to me.

Any Doctor Who fan, old and new, owes it to themselves to read the entire run, and even if you don't give a shit about Doctor Who the craft on display here is so finely tuned that there's a lot to love for a fan of comics in general. The Eighth Doctor strips show what Doctor Who as a concept is capable of when it's unburdened by budget and franchise limitations.

I grew up watching Doctor Who, but I never really loved Doctor Who until 1995. I'm still a fan, but I've never really loved it the way I did when Scott Gray was writing for DWM. You can probably figure out why.

                                              

Jack Harvey 2016. Doctor Who (c) BBC, published by Panini Comics for Doctor Who Magazine. Images used under free use.

A Die-Hard's Case for a Lady Doctor

 

Doctor Who. Doctor. Who. Once upon a time I would have hated the idea of a woman being cast in the role. Not too long ago I was more diplomatically against the idea. Now, I'm all for a Lady Doctor, with the stipulation that they don't fuck it up. As somebody who's been a fan for as long as I can remember (Literally) It's not an easy concept to wrap your head around.

This article is intended to both serve as an argument towards Who fans like me, who have been embedded in the show for a long time, as well as a caution of where I'm worried such a casting could go wrong.

This article is not intended to go into the wider reaching 'big picture' benefits of such a casting, namely because as a man my opinion is not particularly optimised to comment, but also because so many great feminist articles have got there before me. At this point It's a no brainier that it would be a net gain socially, but I'm here to address the conservatives in the camp.

Let's, as is fitting, go back in time. Like I said, I've been a fan of Doctor Who for most of my life. The earliest memory of me visiting my Grandma and Granada is sitting in their home reading a radio times article on the 1994 re-runs. My mother incorrectly identified a Sillurian as an Ice Warrior, that's how vividly I remember it. I was about 7 at the time.

Naturally dedicating myself to every Big Finish audio, novel and comic I could get my hands on in those years, it's ultimate revival has been a bumpy road for one such as me. My issues with both the RTD and Moffat seasons could cover articles, but that's not what we're here for today. I hold no ill will towards 'New Who' fans, but I think it's often overlooked that the experiences of a seven year old English boy in the mid nineties growing up with a patchwork of Hartnall to McCoy are worlds away of that of a fourteen year old American girl watching a consistent story arc unfold every week.

So many feuds could be avoided if only people could remember that. Your show is not mine, nor mine yours, and at the end of the day nothing can change that. It shouldn't be any other way.

Oh wow, we're getting way off subject now. What I'm trying to say is that we all have different ideas of what Doctor Who is, and that intimately influences our perception of what we feel is “proper for it”. Let's jump forwards in time now, to just a little while ago, to when I started to warm to the idea of a female Doctor.

This change of opinion came about through necessity. There have been whisperings here and there of casting a woman in the role for a while now, so I judged that if such a move was only a matter of time then I might as well get used to it. Then Michelle Gomez mastering (poor pun, sorry) the role of the Master (blowing away Simms interpretation, in my opinion), started to turn me around in a big way.

By this point I genuinely started to think about who would be right in the role. Sue Perkins was my first choice, since I love her in everything and she is my spiritual sensai. Helen Mirren came to mind, bringing a certain gravitas to the role. I remember going to a convention a long time ago and hearing Colin Baker mention that he'd like to see Dawn French as The Doctor. I bawked at the time, but I can see it now.

One thing all the women I considered had in common, however, is that they all felt like “exceptions”. They were all either older, tomboys or not conventionally attractive. I questioned myself on whether I was picking them in the same way I would choose a male actor, or were these few the only ones that I could 'bare' watching in the role? Would an outsider, or more traditionally 'feminine' actress ruin it for me? Was I, under it all, still judging potential candidates more harshly purely based on their gender?

Then I had a dream. Not like the great Martin Luther King did, no, this was a literal dream that I had. I dreamed that I was watching a new episode of Doctor Who, and the Doctor was was played by a short, young, tomboyish woman. She dressed with a kind of punk/hipster aesthetic, with a see though shirt with no bra that I doubt the BBC would go for. She had the enthusiasm of the Smith years but had the air-headedness of Baker the first at his best. She was less likely to stand around lecturing about what she knew and more likely to go crawling through air ducts to find out what was going on.

It was fucking awesome, and then I woke up and was disappointed to find it wasn't real.

Anyway, this whole thing sold me on a Lady Doctor regardless of who's playing the part. I don't care who they cast now, I'm interested to see who they'd go with.

However...

Let's go back in time a bit. Remember earlier when I said that at one point I was diplomatically against the idea? At that point my take was that while you could have a Lady Who, I felt there was no way they weren’t going to fuck it up. My biggest fear was that they'd screw up either the casting or the writing and this character would just not feel like The Doctor.

As explained, my mood has changed, but I think my original worries do hold weight when examining what could go wrong. In the interests of hoping for a good Lady Doctor, lets take a look at what I think they are up against.

First up and my biggest problem would be them making a big deal about the gender switch. Old characters cracking out lines like “You're not the man I knew,” “Phwor, I could get used to this,” mistaking them for the companion, The Doctor making jokes about now having boobs and so forth. It not only runs the risk of being grossly transphobic (which never even crossed my mind at the time) it also just comes across as plain cheesy and stupid. I'm not a fan of the comedy in New Who at the best of times and I think this approach would be a big mistake.

The casting is also an issue. I'm not dead set against anyone at this point but subconsciously we never quite know our blind spots. Casting The Doctor in general is always a fine art, and I always advise going against the seemingly obvious choices (People often bring up Jonny Depp. No, there is only one American who could handle the role, and that's the recently departed Robin Williams). I'd hate for the production team to get too swept up in the novelty of casting the first Lady Doctor without really thinking they're the right choice.

Finally, and in relation to the last point, don't treat the casting as a gimmick or a novelty. Idris Elba has always said that he would never accept the role of 'Black James Bond' only 'James Bond'. That's the way it should be. Don't think of this as a new age, a new evolution to the character or whatever buzzword the tabloids will likely pull out of their arses. Think of this as just the the next episode in a show of fifty years. If the Doctor is to be played by a woman then you've got to remember that this era stands side by side with all that came before. This is still Doctor Who. Doctor Who is Doctor Who, stick to that first and foremost.

Basically don't over-think it.

Anyway, to round this little thought piece off, here are a few of my picks for a lady who. (Some of them aren’t even British!) Sue Perkins, Helen Mirren, TamsinGrieg, Dawn French, Gwendoline Christie, Ashley Burch, SarahSilverman, Maria Doyle Kennedy, and Jenny Agutter.

I have more, feel free to bug me about it on Tumblr.

Oh and for the curious, if you're going to go for a non-white male Doctor (who's not Idris Elba), I say go for Benedict Wong.